Visa Signature Requirement Ends This April

By Adnan Farooqui, on 01/14/2018 09:00 PST

Visa has joined the other three major credit card companies to do away with the signature requirement on credit card purchases in North America. This is a result of the ongoing migration to the EMV chip for cards which brings increased security and convenience to the point of sale. As a result of this migration, Visa has made the signature requirement options for all EMV contact and contactless-chip enabled merchants in North America.

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Visa isn’t the only one that’s done this, it’s actually the last of the major credit card companies to do away with the signature requirement. This is something that the likes of Mastercard, American Express, and Discover have already done.

Visa detailed its plans for the adoption of the EMV chip technology back in 2011. Since then, Visa’s partners have deployed more than 460 million EMV chip cards and compatible readers at more than 2.5 million locations.

It also mentioned that in less than two years since the EMV chip was launched in the United States, card fraud has declined 66 percent at EMV chip-enabled merchants.

Visa has only made the signature requirement option which means that it’s up to the retailers now to decide whether or not they want their customers to sign for their purchases. Visa itself is now past that.